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Dean Rader

The Last Day of 34

I.Tomorrow when the sunhas laddered up, flaming,across the hooded blue,I will have slippedinto my 35th year:for centuriesan age few people met.

And herethe silence of the future: early morning sky,moonmapped for the sleeping traveler.Death’s dreaming twin.

II.What passages do we make alone?And where do we go when we go there?

How strange to believewe journey from one year to the next.

How so like us to thinkwe move forward.

If there are crossings,we want to believe we make them.

If there is solitudewe say there are others.

III.On that bridge, in that city in Switzerland,you saidcommunity is work.

For all I know, God may be in both.For all you know, God may be both.

IIIa.It was almost impossible to discernthe river from the sky: the tidal darkness:the people on the promenade:the bridgefrom the water.

IV.It is the evening before my 35th birthday,and I am standing on a bridge in San Francisco.

One year ago, we traveled from Switzerland back to Paris.We drank champagne on your balcony.

It was the evening of my 34th birthday.

I remember nothing else of that dayexcept the sky, which comes back only nowas I look out over the city:it’s that hazy blue, the jacketed deepnessthat keeps sneaking along the horizon,heading toward the color of some other person s memory.